Entrance Ramp

Saturday, May 14th, 2011

It’s likely to be an interesting election year. I daresay, we’ve never had anyone in the White House as charismatic as Barack Obama. We’ve never had an incumbent with a base so intensely dedicated. We’ve never had a base display such an intensity of dedication without being able to explain why. On the other hand, it’s been seventy years since the President has managed to win re-election in an economy this crappy, with so little sign of turn-around.

It’ll be a nail-biter. One thing that makes me nervous is to look around and see the people who are becoming liberal democrats, without realizing they’re becoming liberal democrats. They’re on an “entrance ramp” to the moonbat highway and they don’t know it. Others, on the other hand, are not liberals and never will be. That means there must be a handy definition, perhaps yet to be fully codified, with regard to the ones who are teetering on the brink.

It seems, to me, to begin with a single word, “should.” And the opposing force is provided by another single word, “how.” There are all these situations that “should” not exist in our real world existence, but do; and there are these other situations that cannot be found anywhere…but “should.” We should not have invaded Iraq, these moderates-who-are-becoming-liberal-democrats tell us with such certainty, such passion, such conviction. Now, at first blush, how do you go about not invading Iraq seems a pretty simple proposition, doesn’t it? Easier than falling off a log. Just don’t do it. But as they ritually and monotonously go about morphing this “should”-ness into an ever-so-popular visceral white hot hatred against you-know-who, they forget the backstory. It isn’t ignorance, in fact it is something they have lived through personally. In fact, the backstory has a lot to do with why the hatred burns so brightly. It is the hatred the Londoners felt against Titus Oates before he was sentenced to be lashed in the town square every now and then, whenever someone got it in their heads to go at it again, permanently. It is the hatred the nation felt against Susan Smith who drowned her sons in the car, and then made up a story about some black guy doing it…which people, then, fell for. It is the hatred felt only by the guy who feels like he got snookered. People who didn’t get snookered, don’t feel this hatred. So how would we have gone about not invading Iraq? Those with a working, functional long-term memory know there is no easy answer to this question; in fact, even knowing what we know today, invading Iraq was not necessarily wrong, at all. That’s why we aren’t unanimous on this.

There are other “shoulds” offset by other “hows.” A lot of them have to do with money. To the lazy thinker, when you say “these people should be paid more than seven-seventy-five an hour,” the only deliberation that may ensue after that, is whether…well, whether they should or shouldn’t. Any opposition to this, therefore, is gutterballed into a straw-man argument that goes something like “no, nobody should make more than that” even when nobody in proximity is saying anything remotely close to such a thing. If they bothered to listen to the opposition, they’d find the opposition is more likely to be presenting a “how.” The so-called moderate, but compassionate, who more often than not fancies himself to be the deeper thinker, is so consumed with one side of the equation that he neglects the other: The money must come from somewhere, right? There are only so many possibilities: the management will willingly come up with the extra money; the management will be required to come up with the extra money; a new program will be started to provide the extra money. We can safely exclude the first of those, since if management willingly came up with the extra money, the so-called “worker” would already be getting it and we would not be having the conversation. The other two options have to do with forcing someone, therefore depriving someone of an option, so could we inspect that please?

But the answer is no, because people overly enamored with “should” tend to change the subject when the question turns to “how.” That’s just the way people are.

I see other people are on their way to becoming post-modern liberals without realizing it, because they are simply continuing a life-long response to peer pressure. They do not think this is what is happening to them, because they are not necessarily obsessed, like high school sophomores, with wearing the latest fashions. So they think they are on the outside of this. Many, in fact, are quite insistent that they are “strong-willed,” “thinking for themselves,” teaching their kids to do the same, et cetera, et cetera…

The problem is, though, even though they may not be swayed by what a measured majority may think, they still define “a great point” according to whether it has reached plurality. So if they hear an opinion, they don’t put too much thought into whether it might be valid until they hear someone else say “that’s a great point” then tney might take it a little more seriously. They have the fortitude and the backbone to help push that boulder up to the top of the mountain, then; to add their voices to the chorus until such time as it has reached the fifty-percent mark and reached true majority status. And if that fails, they consider it to have been a noble effort, just like any true rugged individualist.

But they don’t have what it takes to be the guy who says “that’s a great point” — the number two. And they fall well, far, short of what it takes to be the guy who made the point, the number one. To them, if they don’t see that moved-and-seconded sequence, then it is absolutely impossible for any worthy point to have been made.

Henry Fonda could go in to a jury room with eleven of these people…and not have a single prayer of turning things around. It wouldn’t happen. These people are succumbing to peer pressure and they don’t know it, because they aren’t evaluating the ideas and the arguments according to content. Until the motion has been seconded, it isn’t worth considering.

I see another class of person getting suckered into becoming a hardcore lefty without realizing this is what is happening to him. Or her. Actually, it tends to more often be a “her” although it is lopsided in that direction only slightly. My home state of California, at this time, looks to be the first of the fifty states to go bankrupt, because of this kind of thought process. A policy is debated, in advance of a potential enactment of a policy not yet existing, or repeal of a policy already on the books. The debate comes down to whether a defined class of people should receive some special entitlement…and they decide it emotionally. Think of the example up above about hiking the minimum wage. This is slightly different. A litany is soon spewed out about “those people have to…” and then you get to hear about some fuzzy narrative. Nurses have to clean up bodily fluids, cops have to pull people over and maybe get shot, firemen have to charge in to burning buildings. And the prison guards, let’s not forget the prison guards.

I see no point inserting the ritual disclaimers about how wonderful I think nurses/cops/firemen/guards are, because my beef is not with the conclusion reached in these exchanges. My beef is with how it is decided. The virtue of this defined class…is speechified…waxed-lyrically-about. And presto! No need to have any further discussion about it. But this is not the way mature adults decide what to do.

It works the other way too. Oil companies and their evil profits. I know you’ve heard that one a few times lately. We have all this “pain at the pump” and unfortunately, everybody who drives a car to work has a good claim on the smallest-violin, just like cops and nurses and firemen and prison guards. All of us who buy gas have a “how would you like to” story to share, if only there was someone we could share it with who didn’t also have to pay $4.65 a gallon. To a rational thinker, a reasonable question emerges — and remains unanswered. How do we get from there…the price of gas is higher than we would like it to be…to over here, which is more congressional investigations (which never find anything), more regulation, more oversight, and would someone please come up with a scheme to take the profits away. You know the old joke about the South Park Underpants Gnomes with the one, two, three.

This is very much like that:

1. Diminish profits derived from anything that has to do with getting gas on the market;
2. ???
3. Cheaper gas prices!

When is the last time —

No, scratch that. Can anyone name for me a single commodity that came down in price, as a direct result of our efforts to make it more expensive, onerous and difficult to bring that commodity to market.

You see, in none of the above cases is it a very exotic or intricate or involved test of practical thinking these democrats-in-training have failed. They are actually very rudimentary thresholds. I would expect any sixth-grader, who has shown the responsibility, drive, initiative and capacity for independent living to walk home from school and be a latch-key kid, to pass these thresholds.

But of course, once you’re a grown-up you become entitled to conveniences. As are kids. But grown-ups get to decide which conveniences they like, and continue consuming them indefinitely. And what are conveniences, other than vacations from the necessity of personally making things happen, getting your hands dirty? And so adults are availed of the luxury of “bowing out” of the exchange, with everything except their wallets, thus gradually forgetting how things come to be. Beef comes from the store. Corn comes from a can. Water comes from a bottle. Clothes come from Amazon.

Therefore, we are all susceptible to this sloppy, democrat-entrance-ramp thinking. It doesn’t have much to do with intelligence. A lot of very smart people slip into this. They get a “should” in their heads that excites them, forgetting about the “how”; they believe no idea is worth thinking unless it’s moved-and-seconded; and they think privileges and punishments should be decided and set-aside only according to how good or bad some class of people can be perceived to be.

Barack Obama has a good chance for a second term, actually. That isn’t to say it won’t be a tough fight for Him. But I would say most of the people voting for the democrat in the 2012 election, as of today they don’t know yet that they’re democrats. But their thinking is just as diseased.

Fact-based thinking is hard. Hell, thinking in general is hard. One of my life’s honest-to-God turning points came in my freshman year of college, lo these many years ago, when I took a logic class to satisfy my school’s minimum math requirement.

Logic? I thought. That’ll be a snap! I think logically every day!

Yeah. I barely squeaked out a C, after studying more for that one class than all my others combined.

The lesson I took is that so much of everyday “logical” thinking is really more of a cleverness at assigning superficially plausible causes to effects. As in: gas prices are up. Oil company profits are also up. Ergo, oil companies are screwing us.

Looking at that from a truly logical standpoint, a la my freshman course, I’d want a lot more information before proclaiming that syllogism valid. For instance, oil company gross revenues are indeed up, since X gallons sold at $4.00 a gallon will indeed pull in a higher absolute dollar amount than X gallons sold at $2.00 a gallon. However, net profits are actually down, since the cost of refining X gallons has gone way, way up. In other words: there’s a difference between “revenue” and “profit,” and that difference is important. But leftists don’t know that. Or, most likely, don’t care, because hey, “oil companies are screwing us!” is a superficially plausible answer…. which they mistake for “logic.”

Tied to this as well, of course, is the modern tendency to rely on “experts” for everything, even when the “experts'” putative qualifications also rest on this same kind of superficially-plausible thinking (Paul Krugman is an economist. Oil is part of the economy. Paul Krugman says oil companies are screwing us. Ergo, oil companies are screwing us)…. But that’s a rant for another day.

I fear that you are correct, Morgan. In the People’s Republic of Illinois, we just re-elected a man who had no plan to reverse our slide into bankruptcy other than borrow more, tax more, and spend more. I was confident that anyone running against him would have won, but it was not so. This was disconcerting.

I have a colleague, whose response to the plan to raise the state income tax was, if they need the money they should take it. It never occurred to him, nor will it likely ever, that the same people who had been wasting the tax money they collected would blow the increase the same way.

I enjoy reading Morgan’s blog for a lot of reasons, many having to do with the eerily consistent overlap of a lot of our worldviews from Hooters to self-sufficiency.

But this is the kind of post that got me reading him in the first place.

“Should” and “how”. Indeed.

We often have a lot in common with the left on “should”. But whereas we concern ourselves with “how” and note the limitations or unintended consequences… they tend to decree Sunshine From Cucumbers, and when it fails to materialize, point to us for holding it back.

Severian — great comment. Still lookin’ for the Severian shingle. Hopefully some day soon on a web browser near you.

Morgan: Have you never heard of “The Tyranny of the Should”? Woulda and coulda are close seconds.
Regarding the voters in Illinois going for a double-dip of insanity, what’s truely depressing to me is that there are so many completely stupid people out there who really believe in perpetual motion.

I have hope. I think people tend to move in a mass, in a circular motion like a moon going around twin planets, alternating between “should” and “how.” And our tendency in that orbit is to gravitate toward “should,” evaluating only the desirable side of any given two-side equation, when we feel like we can afford to.

In 2008 and 1992 the popular but unstated feeling was that something wasn’t quite right, but it was difficult to say exactly what it was. And so if the entire electorate was really honest about it, and the prevailing sentiment was distilled down to a bumper sticker it would have said “Fix…uh, whatever. RIGHT NOW!” See that’s when we get overly enthused about “should,” when there’s a need to define exactly what it is.

Now, gas is so expensive people are starting to have a tough time getting to work. This is when we have a renewed interest in cause-and-effect, when we start to say to the underpants-gnomes “No, REALLY, fill in Step 2 for me — how’s this work?” We ask that question when we feel like we can’t afford not to. When we feel like we can afford to stay fuzzy on the details, then we go the other way. So my hope is, we’ve seen the last of that for a good long time. That “Obama” becomes a dirty word to describe a whole slew of politicians we’re going to try to avoid.

Once again, I think what you’re seeing is that people will inevitably give up The Way Things Should Be in the face of The Way Things Are.

“Everybody should sacrifice so some unnamed victim can have “x” inevitably gives way to “I have to walk to work because I can’t afford gasoline, and the buses don’t run anymore.” – ergo “Fuck ‘em, let ‘em get their own x.”

Socialism always collapses in the face of reality, and a liberal is just somebody who’s still living off someone else’s money. “Save the Whales” tends to lose significance in the face of a real shark, and the recognition of one’s own status as merely protein.

At that point the aphorism “Should ain’t shit” becomes the default reality. Just look at what happened in Eastern Europe.